When would you give a pounding to someone in need? When you’re talking about a community coming together to give food staples to, say, the new family in town or a new bride and groom. The term pounding, also known as a pound party, derives from the early practice of bringing foodstuffs by the pound. [...]read more »

What would you wear to an ABC party? Hint: the letters stand for “Anything But Clothes.” Any guesses what you’d wear to a tight-and-bright party? Martha gives a taste of the college party terminology from a slang collection compiled by Penn State student Emily Grier. This is part of a complete episode.read more »

Ever been to an ABC party? How about a darty? The hosts discuss these and other slang terms heard around campus. They also talk about mulligrubs and collywobbles, take a shot at a puzzle for celebrity couples, potions that make childbirth a pleasure, and they check-up on old spelling bee champs. And to set the [...]read more »

What do you say if you have guests over and someone in your family has stray food left on the face? In some households, the secret warning is “there’s a gazelle on the lawn.” But why a gazelle? Also, this week: the term for a party to introduce one’s new baby to family and friends, [...]read more »

protestival n.— «Somewhere around 300,000 people converged on the Seattle waterfront Saturday and Sunday to attend the 19th annual Seattle Hempfest, the world’s largest marijuana “protestival,” as organizers like to call it. While organizers and drug reform advocates were out in force to encourage attendees to get involved in changing the marijuana laws, for most of [...]read more »

Blind Tiger 02/27/2015: When you pick up a book of poems, how many do you read in one sitting? Some people devour several in a row, while others... [more]

Idiom's Delight 02/20/2015: A recent study found that some names crop up more frequently than others in certain professions. The name William is especially common among attorneys--and graphic... [more]

Whistle Britches 02/13/2015: Writers and where they do their best creative work. A new book on Geoffrey Chaucer describes the dark, cramped, smelly room where he wrote his early... [more]

Noon Balloon to Rangoon 02/06/2015: Is there a word you keep having to look up in the dictionary, no matter how many times you've looked it up before? Maybe it's... [more]

Above Your Raisin' 02/02/2015: There's a new kind of hamburger menu that involves pixels, not pickles. It's that little stack of horizontal lines in the corner of a webpage... [more]